Water and Climate Information System

The Water and Climate Information System (WCIS) is composed of the database, applications, and tools which support the extensive data collection network of the Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting (SSWSF) Program.

Data collected at automated and manual data collection sites are transmitted either to intermediate Master Stations or directly back to centralized database servers, which are located in a secure, fail-safe environment. Snowpack, precipitation, streamflow, and reservoir data are also collected from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), the Applied Climate Information System (ACIS), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and other entities and entered into the WCIS database.

Depending on the type of information, data are processed on both an hourly and a daily basis and made available to WCIS applications, such as Report Generator, Update Report, and displayed on the Interactive Map.